Every time I speak about my experiences with the publishing industry, someone taps me on the shoulder, eager to share a story of their own. It should not surprise me – Big Hollywood is a site dedicated to the biases of the entertainment industry – but I am moved by the instant camaraderie I feel for the individual standing before me. It is as if we carry wounds that only fellow political outcasts could possibly understand, and when one of us emerges from beneath the cone of silence, there is hope that another may do so at any moment.

I thought that perhaps it would be an interesting project to take an informal poll of Big Hollywood readers – conservatives, libertarians, and individuals who subscribe to other improper schools of thought – who work in the entertainment industry and feel out of sorts. We should keep it simple, so let’s start with something like this:

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Industry: Publishing

Position: Author

Status: Just keep my mouth shut

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Industry: Music

Position: Mixer

Status: Out of the closet and out of work (more…)

Nothing like gajillionaires Alec Baldwin and Kevin Spacey demanding the working class fund their pet projects. How is this different than if the dreaded Koch Bros. asked the government to subsidize polo lessons? Well, what’s different is that the media would rightfully laugh the Koch Bros. off the stage even as they take Spacey’s nonsense seriously:

The Wrap:

Kevin Spacey credited federally funded arts programs for his successful career and called for the federal government to continue its support for public arts programs.

The Academy Award-winning actor made his remarks Monday at the 24th annual Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Spacey delivered the speech to a coalition of organizations who are in the to the nation’s capitol this week to participate in Arts Advocacy Day.

He related his own story of growing up as a child from South Orange, New Jersey, from a modest background with a lack of self-confidence. He got a major boost at age 13 when he was asked to perform a scene in a play and actor Jack Lemmon praised his performance and encouraged young Spacey to pursue his dream of becoming an actor.

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As a follow-up to my debut piece, Conservative Culture Warriors Unite at BigDawg Music Mafia, I wanted to write another piece to let you all know that we’re really heating things up on the culture war front at BigDawg Music Mafia.  Since launching the free social networking site for conservative arts & entertainment last Fall, we’ve attracted some seriously talented artists with minimal National press prior to BIGDawg Music Mafia  (represented by yours truly) being added to the BIGHollywood Contributors roster (thank you, John Nolte),  a guest appearance on Breitbart.tv’s The Stage Right Show, and mentions on Foxnews.com and CNN.com.  Since then, we’ve seen a BIG surge in membership and daily traffic at our site.  This bodes well for conservative culture warriors who refuse to sit idly by as so many liberals in the entertainment industry continue to saturate our airwaves and movie screens with their radical, Marxist agenda.  “That’s right, I said it!” (Mark Levin-ism…love that guy!).  The word is most definitely getting out…

The beauty of having a central gathering place online is the great networking and collaborations taking place.  Case in point, one of our gifted members, Joe Dan Gorman, who has some great, hard-hitting conservative messages in his songs and videos (a couple of which YouTube has banned – “You(Tube) can’t handle the truth!”…this will be a topic for another day), recently wrote and produced a new music video entitled We Will Not Submit and invited some of our members to join him in recording some back-up vocals for the song and taking part in his video, and it is already getting tons of great reviews and being aired on conservative internet and AM/FM radio stations across the country.

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Other recent collaborations include  AlfonZo Rachel, Nate Smoove, and Rufus Troutman on their latest song, Government Not the Answer.  Bobby Powers and Party Time, my songmate, BigDawg, and I recently collaborated on Freedom Reigns and performed an acoustic version at our CPAC Liberty Fest.  Several other cool collaborations are currently underway between members of our site – something BigDawg and I are thrilled to see.

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From Fox News:

A senior official at the National Endowment for the Arts encouraged artists to promote President Obama’s political agenda in a conference call he organized with the White House. The NEA’s communications director Yosi Sergant eventually resigned in August amid accusations that the grant-making organization was becoming politicized. The administration called it a “teaching moment,” but the media didn’t seem to catch the lesson. (more…)

Recently revealed documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) show a few interesting facts and supports the claims made in my earlier articles– namely, Yosi Sergant, the former NEA Communications Director, did not work alone in organizing the controversial August 10th conference call; that the White House Office of Public Engagement was fully aware of his efforts; and most importantly, that The Corporation for National and Community Service misrepresented who actually initiated the meeting.

On August 28th, Josh Miller of Foxnews.com reported “Siobhan Dugan, a spokeswoman for [The Corporation for National and Community Service], said the call was organized by an ‘individual interested’ in the group…”

This statement does not correspond with the facts.

The FOIA documents clearly show that on July 29th at 3:39pm, Nell Abernathy, a representative of The Corporation, emailed Yosi Sergant, former Communications Director of the National Endowment for the Arts, indicating that she was the person behind the content of the meeting when she stated (emphasis added):

Thanks for chatting yesterday – I’m attaching a few docs and running through what I think are my next steps.

She goes on to discuss the “Art event coordination” and provides an invite and draft of the meeting agenda to Sergant. Abernathy also states, “What is a reasonable time frame for getting together a list and recruiting some of your friends to lead?” This is in direct contradiction to the above claim by Siobhan Dugan of The Corporation. (more…)

Kerry Picket at the Washington Times reports today:

The Obama administration apparently met with 60 artists and creative organizers as early as May 12 according to an online document  (downloadable)by the Pratt Center for Community Development, State Voices, Arlene Goldbard, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.  Other artists(link1 link 2)have corroborated this meeting happened. (h/t machogirl from FR)

Here are the bullet points from an online document called a “White House Briefing” report, though that has not yet been confirmed: (more…)